Something’s going down at Sullivan & Cromwell. The Wall Street Journal has confirmed the rumors swirling around Biglaw that there’s a civil war brewing at Sullivan & Cromwell over just how far the firm should go for its most famous — and most toxic — client.
When S&C took Donald Trump on as a client last year, Bob Giuffra reportedly drew a red line for the partnership. The firm would handle Trump’s criminal appeal over the falsified business records conviction, and it would handle his appeal of the civil fraud judgment. But the Carroll cases — where a jury found Trump sexually abused and defamed E. Jean Carroll — were, Giuffra assured partners, off limits.
Well, about that line in the sand… apparently it is gone. According to the Journal, S&C has quietly stepped in to help Trump prepare a Supreme Court petition seeking review of the $83 million defamation verdict (separate from the $5 million verdict SCOTUS already declined to touch). Giuffra himself is reportedly among the S&C lawyers doing the work.
If this feels familiar, it’s because we caught a glimpse of it in real time. Back in June, we wondered aloud what Giuffra was doing showing up at the Second Circuit for oral argument in the Carroll defamation appeal (alongside Boris Epshteyn, the controversial personal attorney of Donald Trump), a case S&C, at the time, was not supposed to be involved in. We chalked it up to schmoozing, but turns out it may have been something closer to homework.
The optics problem here isn’t just that Giuffra moved the goalposts, it’s how he moved them. Per the Journal, the original decision to represent Trump at all wasn’t made by S&C’s committee of managing partners, the body that typically signs off on controversial representations; instead, the executive committee made the call. And when it came to the Carroll work specifically, the executive committee reportedly didn’t loop in the managing partners at all, while the firm was simultaneously denying to reporters that it had any involvement in the case.
This isn’t the first time S&C’s governance and candor have come under outside scrutiny, either. The firm got a pointed letter from Congress over Giuffra’s role in the Paul Weiss deal-brokering, asking exactly the kind of “who knew what, when” questions that are now resurfacing internally.
Naturally, the firm’s on-the-record comment is a masterclass in saying nothing. A spokesperson told the Journal that the decision to represent Trump came only after “thorough discussion” with partners and deliberation at the Managing Partners and Management Committees, notably not addressing whether that same process applied to the Carroll pivot. On the Carroll case itself, the firm won’t discuss it at all, citing confidentiality around the president’s representation.
The firm has reportedly told lawyers not to talk to the press about the Trump work and to flag any reporter outreach — and, more recently, has warned that those caught leaking risk getting shown the door.
We’ve tracked S&C’s steadily deepening entanglement with this White House for over a year now — the Paul Weiss deal-brokering, the ethics questions about Giuffra’s role, the government jobs flowing to S&C alumni, and the discomfort S&C partners have had with this client since January 2025. What’s new is that the firm’s red line on the Trump representation was apparently drawn in pencil.
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Bluesky @Kathryn1
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